Posted in: Books, Horror, Pop Culture, Pop Culture History | Tagged: book, FAB Press, horror, horror films, House of Psychotic Women, Kier-La Janisse, limited edition, memoir, women in horror

House Of Psychotic Women: Expanded Ltd. Edition Horror Memoir

In 2012, a book debuted that would go on to canonical status and usher in a new way of writing about film. Kier-La Janisse's House of Psychotic Women was billed as "an autobiographical topography of female neurosis in horror and exploitation films" and explored hundreds of movies through a daringly personal lens. Janisse is a film writer, programmer, producer, and founder of The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies.

In this pioneering work, anecdotes and memories interweave with film history, criticism, trivia, and confrontational imagery to create a reflective personal history and an examination of female madness, both onscreen and off. To mark its 10th anniversary,  celebrated film writer, programmer, producer, and director (Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched; 2021) Janisse and FAB Press have reteamed to produce an expanded edition of House of Psychotic Women, featuring new writing on 100 more films – many of which were inspired in part by the book itself – and hundreds of images, including a 48-page full-color section. The expanded edition of House of Psychotic Women launched on July 24th at Montreal's Fantasia Film Festival in a limited edition, large-format hardcover.

"Cinema is full of neurotic personalities, but few things are more transfixing than a woman losing her mind onscreen. Horror as a genre provides the most welcoming platform for these histrionics: crippling paranoia, desperate loneliness, masochistic death-wishes, dangerous obsessiveness, apocalyptic hysteria. Unlike her male counterpart – 'the eccentric' – the female neurotic lives a shamed existence, making these films those rare places where her destructive emotions get to play."

Films covered in the book include: The Entity, Black Swan, Repulsion, 3 Women, The Corruption of Chris Miller, Singapore Sling, Christiane F., Toys Are Not For Children, Let's Scare Jessica to Death, The Haunting of Julia, Mademoiselle, Out of the Blue, Secret Ceremony, Cutting Moments, Dr. Jekyll and His Women, The Piano Teacher, Possession, The Brood, Antichrist and hundreds more!

Included in the limited edition hardcover will be an exclusive CD of author Janisse reading Charlotte Perkins Gilman's classic feminist horror story The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) with an original score composed and performed by Timothy Fife (known for his work with labels Death Waltz and Library of the Occult) and cover art by Katy Horan (Literary Witches, Ask Baba Yaga). House of Psychotic Women will be widely available in the regular edition as of October 2022.

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